


Of Potentiality

by pulsadinura



Category: Cardcaptor Sakura
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:20:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24658246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pulsadinura/pseuds/pulsadinura
Summary: Within the walls of Clow Reed's home, talk was not time-bound. Shared knowledge could not be presumed, but was instead meted out in morsels. Dream-scrying in the bath. Premonitions over tea.Of all these uncertainties, one worries Yue in particular.
Relationships: Clow Reed/Yue
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Of Potentiality

“I made you to be more intuitive than Cerberus,” Clow Reed once said. He recalls this as having been over tea, the cup before him steaming and redolent with tannin, and half-empty despite not needing to drink as humans did. “He needs only to protect but you, you need to discern. I gave you a logician’s mind.”

“It is unclear to me what I am discerning,”

Clow Reed’s eyebrows shot up behind his glasses. “You will know eventually. Not within my lifetime, but you will know.” He leaned back in his chair contentedly; angled his face to the window as if he had simply remarked on the fine weather.

Within the walls of that great house, talk was not time-bound. Shared knowledge could not be presumed, but was instead meted out in morsels. Dream-scrying in the bath. Premonitions over tea.

Yue did not enjoy being reminded that there would a time after.

-

Perhaps this was one of the lesser-known travails of being summoned into the world fully formed: Yue possessed knowledge without knowing how it had been acquired. He was clearly in a state of having learned, but the memory of the learning was closed to him, a wall dividing his lived experience from Clow Reed’s. He had been born with knowledge, Clow Reed’s knowledge, but without its causality. A priori: conclusions drawn independently of experience.

This created a conundrum of unknowns, an eternal present of perhaps knowing. Yue could pick up a book in a language he did not recognize, and could read it regardless; Yue could discern spices by smell despite never having needed to eat. Sometimes Clow Reed would test him, slipping some herb or aromatic into his tea just to see if he could identify it, and when he would answer “cardamom” or “anise”, the names clumsy and foreign on his tongue, Clow Reed would smile beneficently, doubly proud, both of himself and his creation.

That alone was worth it, in its own way.

-

“Only you would be so prescient about matters of the mind. I can promise you that Cerberus hasn’t paid it one thought. In this way, you are exactly what you are supposed to be.”

Yue rotated the cup between his fingers, considering. “Licorice,” he answered.

Clow Reed grinned. “Very good.”

-

There were some things that Yue knew with certainty.

He knew that Clow Reed had a penchant for candied ginger, and although he had no need for food he snuck into the larder and tipped a piece of it into his mouth regardless, and it was so sweet it made him ache all over.

He knew that he had spread apart the collars of his tunics before the bathroom mirror in some private intimacy, and had found the faint blue veins that threaded across his chest just under the skin. He created unformed, heat-struck scenarios in which Clow Reed would find these too, and would murmur “you are very much human, in your way,” before - what? His imaginings always ran out there, like turning away from a blinding sun.

He knew that he was doted on, spared from household tasks, allowed to doze beneath the great cherry tree in the garden until sundown. He knew that sometimes Clow Reed would join him, and he would wake to stars, and their shoulders touching.

He knew that there would be an end to these gifts, and that it would catch him unawares. Clow Reed would see it coming, because he saw everything – time was something he could hold to the light and examine whole, a butterfly in a jar. But for those burdened with uncertainty, there would only be a cruel and sudden severance.

He had to create one particular certainty before that happened.

-

Cerberus snored vaingloriously, draped belly-up over a settee like a coat that had been tossed there. It was not dignified, but Yue had to admire the sheer elasticity of it, the things a cats’ body could accommodate that his did not. If was to poke at him Cerberus would blurt something ridiculous, dreaming out loud, likely about honey cakes or undercooked bacon or whatever craving preoccupied him that day. This, however, was not the time for anything that amounted to fun. Yue turned from his counterpart and departed down the corridor in silence.

Double doors at the end of the hall, a blazing sun graven upon one, a crescent moon on the other. Within, Clow Reed slumbered, little more than a small shape in an overlarge bed, things like presence and majesty having no bearing on the dreaming. Yue alighted there, gathering himself alongside him in parallel, the slits of his pupils waxing wide in the dark.

“I’m sure you didn’t mean to wake me,” Clow Reed said, lucidly and without sarcasm. 

“No,” Yue agreed.

Clow Reed shifted to face him, heavy-limbed with sleep, and surprisingly slight without the heavy cloaks he draped about his shoulders in daytime. “So what is it that you require?”

Yue was silent, his pale eyes probing in the darkness, interrogating Clow Reed’s face where it pressed into his pillow.

“Yue,” Clow Reed said gently, gathering his hands into his own. He had tucked his fists under his chin without having noticed, like an anxious child; to have them unfurled so was akin to releasing a held breath. “I don’t mean this as an insult, but you aren’t as stoic as you think.”

“So then, you know that I lo— I have—“ Yue stopped short, frowning. He was unused to talking about himself so defenselessly, and their intertwined hands were making him feel brittle in manner beyond what could be spoken. “You know of my feelings for you,“ he concluded.

“You don’t have to be so remote about it,” Clow Reed chuckled to himself. “Of course I know. Although, the way you love me is not the same as the way I love you.”

Yue nodded slackly, resisting the urge to withdraw his hands and leave. Fundamentally, this nebulous thisness was doomed from the start. He was a creation of and not a counterpart to, could only ever be offshoot, scion, Adam’s rib stolen in Eden and fashioned into a new, subaltern life. But without the gift of foresight there was room for doubt, for hope, and so he could only seek certainty in this fumbling, callow way.

“It’s nothing to get discouraged about. In fact, it’s to be expected. I’m the only person you know.”

“I don’t want to know anyone else,” Yue insisted.

“You say that now,” Clow Reed sighed fondly. “In the future, there will be others. You will learn to be remarkably tender with them.”

“I don’t want any others,” Yue barked, his voice barbed with ice.

“Now, now,” Clow Reed chided, wrapping his arms around Yue’s waist and heaving him bodily over himself. His hands found Yue’s head where it rested on his chest and cradled it there. “Creation is love in potentiality. When I set to work making you, I knew with certainty that I would cherish whatever you became. To feel anything but love toward you would be betrayal.” 

Yue lay wordlessly, blinking against Clow Reed’s heartbeat, the way his ribcage vibrated as he spoke, filling him up with frequency. The hands smoothing his hair had rendered him all but inert, a windup automaton drained of its drive.

“Cerberus was the first of you two, and was a bit of a lark, as you can probably tell,” Clow Reed continued. “He is very much the guardian beast, though he has his charms. In my ambition, I felt that the second guardian needed a human form. There is much of me in you; direct transference was possible, more than I expected. We became symbiotic, in that way.” 

“So then…”

“We were always going to be drawn to each other. But to follow that path would be to deny you free will. You are not some kept pet. You deserve more than just servitude to some prideful man.”

“I’m not sure I want anything else,” Yue murmured. 

“Give it time. You’ll find that other ways of living might suit you,” Clow Reed suggested. “You will learn things from others that I am too shortsighted to teach you.”

“I don’t like it when you talk about this time after your death. I don’t want to be apart from you.”

“Someday you will be. All humans die, and I’ve avoided it longer than most. But for now, I will treasure you in this life, and if I get a second one I will treasure you in it too.”

Yue closed his eyes. He was bleary with emotional expenditure and lulled toward sleep by the hands in his hair, and Clow Reed had treated his bedclothes with something fragrant that made the breaths he drew feel humid with vitality. “Can I stay?” He asked, his voice softened.

“I’d like it if you did,” Clow Reed replied. “You don’t have to keep yourself at a distance.”

Summoning forth his wings and drawing them in close to his sides, Yue created a cocoon of luxuriant heat around them. Clow Reed breathed deep against him, settling his arms about his shoulders.

“Oh,” Yue muttered, on the brink of unconsciousness. “It’s vetiver.”

“Well done,” Clow Reed said low in his throat. “Goodnight, my moon.”

And so the moon and his master slept, enclosed in wings, the future safely set aside, if only for a night.

**Author's Note:**

> I did not expect to write this, it simply poured out of me at the expense of my many other WIPs. Cardcaptor Sakura on Netflix is some potent nostalgia.


End file.
